বাকশক্তি

Translation commentary

Sharmita Lahiri

One of the most poignant endings I have ever read is of the Bengali short story “Shaasti” (Punishment) by noble laureate Rabindranath Tagore. It ends with the character Chandana responding “maoron” (Bengali) to her husband’s words. Yet, no translation that I have read of this story has ever successfully encapsulated the poignancy and thus the affect of this word in the original text. “Maoron” means “death”/“dying”/“demise”; yet, Tagore’s use of the word in the story implies so much more; it combines at once a plethora of emotions - frustration, sadness, betrayal and defiance. So, one has to admit that the phrase “lost in translation” does indeed apply to the short story “Shaasti”. However, this story is not the rare instance where translations involves a loss of the true essence of the original. Although I am not a translation theorist or a linguist, as a reader this has been my recurrent feeling when I have read translations from languages that I am unfamiliar with, or from English to Bengali and Bengali to English - the two languages that I grew up learning simultaneously and continue to speak, read, and write in formal and informal capacities.

An engagement with translation, thus inevitably makes me begin with the premise that I must endeavor my very best to minimize the loss of the essence of the original in my translated version. This remained true as I began translating Anne Enright’s “Speech”. As in the cases of my other translated works, here as well, what had to be ruled out from the beginning was the possibility of a literal word to word, and sentence by sentence translation into Bengali of Enright’s prose, because much would thus be lost of both Enright’s profound thoughts and the beauty of her prose.  

Also, it had to be taken into consideration that the connotations of the Bengali equivalents of several words and phrases used by Enright differ substantially from their English counterparts. Some such examples are – “listen hard”; “call and answer”; “turning around, and opening her mouth to say something wonderful and long and syntactically amazing”; “it is in there somewhere”; “all writers have Major Mothers, Serious Mothers, sometimes Demanding Mothers — the kind of women you always know when they are in the room” ; “I float it across the dinner table”.

A back translation of my Bengali version of these expressions and words would read as follows:

  - Original : “listen hard”

My translation:  “extremely carefully”;

  - Original: “For months we have been on call and answer”

My translation: “Our conversation has been continuing for months”;

  - Original: “turning around, and opening her mouth to say something wonderful and long and syntactically amazing”

My translation: “looking towards me, she utters a beautiful, long, and complete sentence”;

  - Original: “it is in there somewhere”

My translation: “this ability is hidden in her”

  - Original: “all writers have Major Mothers, Serious Mothers, sometimes Demanding Mothers — the kind of women you always know when they are in the room.”

My translation: “mothers play a very significant role in the lives of all writers. They are serious in nature and demand that their children be the best; they are unique and thus can be distinguished in a crowd.”

  - Original: “I float it across the dinner table”

My translation: “at the dinner  table I attempt to test my theory.”

Bengali, unlike English, does not have pronouns, like he and she, that denote gender. “Speech” begins with the sentence “ No one else can hear the baby speak, but I can.” And then follows-  “I can hear her say ‘up’ and ‘clap’,”- a sentence indicating the gender of the baby. I had to think and re-think if I should reveal the gender of the child in very first sentence using the word “girlchild” or keep it for a few sentences later. I decided to make the second choice.

The two languages, English and Bengali are considerably different in terms of the structure of sentences. So to construct grammatically correct and complete sentences, the sequence of words in the original English sentences often had to be changed in the Bengali sentences. Further, sometimes words had to be added at the beginning, or the end, or within a sentence to prevent it from becoming a sentence fragment in Bengali. For example - in my translation  of the sentence “ . . . and gives me a new respect for birds, whales and chimpanzees”, I wrote “gives me a new respect for the language of birds, whales and chimpanzees”; the addition of the word “language” was imperative to create completeness in terms of sentence structure in Bengali.  

Further, to ensure that there is no shift in meaning in conveying Enright’s thoughts, words that are not exact Bengali equivalents of the English words used in the original, had to be chosen with utmost attention. For instance, the word “trick” in Bengali has a very different connotation from what it is used to mean in the original text. So instead of using the exact Bengali word for trick, a group of words that convey appropriately the meaning of the original text was used.

An aspect that I found to be unique in “Speech” is Enright suddenly directly addressing the reader by using the second person - “A baby looks at your face as you say a word, and whatever passes between you as you hear the word back, is love and love returned.” As a reader, I was unprepared for this sudden direct address. This is uncommon in Bengali writings as well, and I ensured conveying this uniqueness of style of using you and directly addressing the reader adopted by Enright to the Bengali readers of “Speech.”

Literary training and my readings have made me aware that the profundity of thoughts, the sensibility, and the beauty of the writing of the original text is often compromised in the translation, as they fail to find adequate articulation in a different language. This has been a serious concern in the debate regarding the quality of Indian Writing in English and literature written in the various regional languages of India. Reputed scholars like Meenakshi Mukherjee and Aijaz Ahmad have argued that while Indian Writing in English has received international acclaim primarily due to the language, the best of Indian regional language literature translated into English have not garnered such wide spread appreciation. The cause of this lack of success of English translations is that the vernacular sensibility, the profoundness of the ideas, and the beauty of language of the various regional language Indian writings could not find appropriate expression in the translated versions.

I endeavored my best to not let such inadequacy mar the quality of my translation of “Speech”. This necessitated reading and re-reading the original text, constantly churning the thoughts expressed by Enright in my mind to completely comprehend their nuanced profundity and sensibility, and writing and re-writing the Bengali version. In fact, the section that I found most difficult to translate, keeping the above mentioned challenges in mind, was the following:

“There is nothing so exciting as speech. A baby looks at your face as you say a word, and whatever passes between you as you hear the word back, is love and love returned. It is the gaze made manifest. Teaching a child to speak is giving them the world. It is better than feeding them, I realise, as I stand beside the kitchen counter, dropping scraps of words to my daughter’s up-tilted face. And I think that all words are sublimated nurture, or a request for nurture, or its provision. All words happen in the space between you and your dear old Ma.”

It involved substantial re-thinking and several modifications of the Bengali version.  

By translating  Enright’s “Speech” from English into Bengali, I have been able to further my understanding of the nuances and the complexities that the process of translation involves, and I have gained a deeper insight into the differences between English and Bengali as languages. I feel I have learned to challenge myself as a translator, and thus I have been able to enhance my skills of translation. An exposure to Enright’s works, and in-depth and detailed engagement with her thoughts and ideas have enriched me as a lover of literature and a practitioner of literary studies.